


Find Your Fate

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drama, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-03
Updated: 2011-05-03
Packaged: 2019-01-19 15:48:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12413178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: Draco Malfoy and Sophia Avery have known each other, since their first year at Hogwarts and when they fell in love, during thier fifth year, they kept it a secret.Until now.Now, it's been discovered and Draco is doing everything he can to keep himself and his love, Sophia, sane through the torture the Death Eaters put them ...





	Find Your Fate

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

I was shaking as I walked swiftly up towards the top of the Astronomy tower, so late in the evening. However, it was not in anticipation, like those who would follow me to the tower after my deed was done, would think it was. No. It wasn’t that. It would never be that. Despite what people thought, I was not a monster. Despite what people said, I did not choose this. My father forced me into this society of murders and traitors. If it had been up to me, I would have stayed on the side of the light. I would have betrayed the darkness that plagued and dirtied me and my family, and turned my father in, instead of defending him. I would have steered clear of the horrid things that group of killers was doing nearly every day. 

But I hadn’t been given a choice. I’d never been given a choice. Unless I’d been born into a different family, I’d never had a choice.

            I pulled my wand out of my pocket and held it in front of my face, pointing it directly at the elderly man, who was my headmaster, sitting on some sort of outcropping in the metal structure we were both standing on. My hands were shaking. I could tell because my wand wavered before my face. Right before I stepped into the light of the Dark Mark that shone above both me and the elderly man on the top of the windy Astronomy tower, so late at night, I observed the man I was supposed to kill. Albus Dumbledore. I knew very little about him I now realized as I stared at him and tried to think of something that he would be most remembered for. I only knew what everyone else knew. And that wasn’t much beyond the heroic things he had done for the wizard nation over the few…hundred years he’d been alive.

            I licked my lips and took a giant step, so I was standing in the light of the Dark Mark, right where Dumbledore could see me. He glanced over at me immediately, he even acknowledged my presence by saying cheerfully without any hint of panic or distress in his voice, “Good evening, Draco.”

            I tried to warp those three words, so that instead of them being a pleasant greeting, they were a vicious insult. My eyes narrowed as I was filled with the false anger I’d forced on myself.  I glanced around, confirming that we were truly alone. I looked towards Dumbledore’s feet. Resting there was a pair of broomsticks. I wondered what he had been doing, but before I could get too far off subject, I shook myself mentally, reminding myself, _That doesn’t matter right now._ Nothing mattered. Nothing except the mission I’d been assigned.

            However, another thought entered my mind as I stepped forward.

            _What if it’s Potter? Or one of his annoying friends?_

Unfortunately, since Potter and his obnoxious friends always seemed to be everywhere at once, there was the possibility that he was lurking nearby, ready to curse me, so I asked, in a voice that matched the anger I felt inside, “Who else is here?”

            Dumbledore didn’t answer my question. Not really. He just said, “A question I might ask you. Or are you acting alone?”

            My eyes shifted from the broomsticks at Dumbledore’s feet to his pale eyes. I wished more than anything I wasn’t such a coward. I wished I could lower my wand and throw myself off the tower, instead of him. In a perfect world, I could just lower my wand and I wouldn’t have to worry about someone coming up and finishing both me and him off. However, if this world were truly perfect, I wouldn’t even be in this situation to begin with. 

I licked my lips, forgetting for a moment that Dumbledore had asked me something, since I was too caught up in my own thoughts. Then suddenly, I remembered and I replied, “No. I’ve got backup. There are Death Eaters here in your school tonight.” The words were far angrier than I had imagined them in my head, but that was all for the better. I wanted this man to hate me before I killed him. Then I might not feel as horrible about what I was doing.

_Then I might not think about_ her _so much…_

I shook thoughts of her from my mind as Dumbledore gave me a smile that didn’t seem sardonic at all in any way and said, “Well, well. Very good indeed. You found a way to let them in, did you?” He sounded amused, like I was his son, showing him some vast project I had just finished that no one my age would have been able to accomplish.

“Yeah,” I answered, half stuttering. I was panting now as I got closer and closer to the realization of what I was going to do, even though _she_ had begged me, with tears streaming down her face not to. I tried to keep the tears from my own eyes and focus as I added, “Right under your nose and you never realized!” I congratulated myself for sounding as resentful and angry as I did, but despite the hateful words and boasting, the elderly man was still calm and kind to me in his reply.

“Ingenious. Yet…forgive me…where are they now? You seem unsupported.”

I thought so seriously about just ending it all right then that I even glanced back over my shoulder to see how far the ground was from where I was standing , wondering if I would die if I just dropped off of the building right now. _How can this man be asking me to forgive_ him _? I’m the one who’s going to be doing the killing and_ he’s _asking for forgiveness?_

I was so baffled that I almost forgot to reply. I turned back to Dumbledore, licked my lips yet again and said, “They met some of your guards. They’re having a fight down below. They won’t be long…I came on ahead. I – I’ve got a job to do.” My heart raced as I said the words.

Finally Dumbledore said, softly, “Well, then, you must get on and do it, my dear boy.”

My heart hammered against my rib cage and I wondered how Dumbledore could not hear it. Surely he could hear the thumping, the banging like an impatient man at the door, that permeated from my chest. I stared into his strange blue eyes, not daring to look anywhere else for fear that the tears that were lingering just behind my eyelids would break forth and begin streaming down my cheeks. I couldn’t show any weakness if I was going to do this right.

“Draco, Draco, you are not a killer,” Dumbledore said finally breaking my reverie. 

“How do you know?” I said at once, before I could stop myself. I felt myself flush as I realized how childish I sounded and hoped that he couldn’t see the reddening – or really _pinkening –_ of my cheeks. To compensate I added, with more force, “You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know what I’ve done!” 

The words made me think of _her._ I’d said the same thing to her once upon a time…when things were far more simple than they were now. _Were they ever truly simple as all of that?_ A voice in my mind asked and if I was going to be completely honest with myself, which was a rarity, I’d have to say no, nothing had ever been easy. Never. Not even when I’d tried to be the kind of good child my parents had wanted me to be.

“Oh yes I do,” Dumbledore said mildly, breaking through my reverie once more. “You almost killed Katie Bell and Ronald Weasley. You have been trying, with increasing desperation, to kill me all year. Forgive me, Draco, but they have been feeble attempts…So feeble, to be honest, that I wonder whether your heart was really in it.”

“It has been in it!” I shouted vehemently, trying to convince myself more than Dumbledore, since _her_ face appeared before me as it had after every single incident, throughout the year. “I’ve been working on it all year, and tonight –” A muffled yell that came from the depths of the castle below made me stiffen and glance over my shoulder, making me forget everything that was happening. Dumbledore I was supposed to murder, what would happen to me or _her_ if I didn’t complete the job, the possibility that Potter and his friends were lying in wait somewhere in the shadows nearby. I only thought of her. 

“Somebody is putting up a good fight,” Dumbledore said conversationally. “But you were saying…yes, you have managed to introduce Death Eaters to my school, which, I admit, I thought impossible…how did you do it?”

I said nothing. A girl’s scream nearly stopped my heart. I was paralyzed with fear, but not for my safety anymore. For _her_ safety. I knew she would fight. And if she fought…she was bound to lose, especially against them. They were so much more powerful than she. And she was still very weak, weak from…

“Perhaps you ought to get on with the job alone,” suggested Dumbledore, breaking me free from my inner turmoil once more. “What if your backup has been thwarted by my guard? As you have perhaps realized, there are members of the Order of the Phoenix here tonight too. And after all, you don’t really need help…I have no wand at the moment…I cannot defend myself.”

I forgot for a moment what I was talking about and I merely stared at him. My thoughts were still focused on her and everything about her. Her smile. Her eyes. Her beautiful face. I must have looked so stupid, just standing there before him as he spoke, my mind off in another time and place where everything was slightly easier, slightly simpler, even though we knew that the happiness we had couldn’t last.

“I see,” Dumbledore said, kindly when I neither moved nor spoke, though I don’t think he quite understood why. Or maybe he did and he just didn’t want to embarrass me as he added, “You are afraid to act until they join you.”

I got angry then. For real. How dare this man question my bravery. _I’m brave enough for her._ I thought angrily, but a voice inside me whispered, _Just not for this mission, not for this job._

I didn’t tell him any of that, though. “I’m not afraid,” I snarled instead. I knew, even as I said it, I was lying both to myself and to him, since I still made no move to hurt him. “It’s you who should be scared!”

“But why?” Dumbledore asked, sounding truly perplexed. “I don’t think you will kill me, Draco. Killing is not nearly as easy as the innocent believe…” I had to hold back my sardonic laughter at this. He truly thought me innocent? It just showed how arrogant, how naïve he was. “So tell me, while we wait for your friends…how did you smuggle them in here? It seems to have taken you a long time to work out how to do it.”

I could practically feel my face turning green as I suppressed the urge to scream in frustration and vomit in horror as the screams below us continued. At one time, I could almost swear I heard her voice, calling out to me, but I must have imagined it because in the next second every voice was lost in the cacophony that was going on below us. I gulped and took several deep breaths, trying to calm myself and push her as far from my mind as I could. I glared at Dumbledore, my wand pointing directly at his heart. Then I said, mainly because I thought he had a right to know, “I had to mend the broken Vanishing Cabinet that no one’s used for years. The one Montague got lost in last year.”

“Aaaah.” Dumbledore’s sigh was almost a groan. I suppressed the urge to run over to him and tell him I was sorry and beg him to take me far away from this place. Dumbledore closed his eyes as though he were very tired and weary before he continued. “That was clever…There is a pair, I take it?”

“In Borgin and Burkes,” I said, hoping that if I kept talking, I wouldn’t hear the screams below or think of her, “and they make a kind of passage between them. Montague told me that when he was stuck in the Hogwarts one, he was trapped in limbo but sometimes he could hear what was going on at school, and sometimes what was going on in the shop, as if the cabinet was traveling between them, but he couldn’t make anyone hear him…In the end, he managed to Apparate out, even though he’d never passed his test. He nearly died doing it. Everyone thought it was a really good story, but I was the only one who realized what it meant – even Borgin didn’t know – I was the one who realized there could be a way into Hogwarts through the cabinets if I fixed the broken one.”

“Very good,” Dumbledore murmured and I hated, yet again, that he complimented me instead of reprimanding me. “So the Death Eaters were able to pass from Borgin and Burkes into the school to help you…A clever plan, a very clever plan…and, as you said, right under my nose.”

“Yeah,” I said, trying to draw strength and comfort from his praise instead of overwhelming guilt. “Yeah it was!”

“But there were times,” he went on to say, “weren’t there when you were not sure you would succeed in mending the cabinet? And you resorted to crude and badly judged measures such as sending me a cursed necklace that was bound to reach the wrong hands…poisoning mead there was only the slightest chance I might drink…”

His reminding me of those incidences brought her face to my mind again. I remembered how she had pounded her fists into my chest, begging me to explain, wondering why I felt that I must do evil, instead of good. 

_Why?_ She would implore of me. _Why must you do this? Why can’t we run away together? Why can’t we just go where he’ll never ever find us?_

I would then collect her small, fragile hands in both of mine, kissing her fingers as though they were made of glass with my eyes closed and tell her, _Because he would find us. He would find us and then he would kill us, but not after he used you to torture me. I will never let that happen._

I realized that my own eyes truly were closed and that I was turned away from Dumbledore, my face a mask of pain. I narrowed my brows as I opened my eyes and turned back to him, my stare cooler than it had been a moment ago as I replied, “Yeah, well, you still didn’t realize who was behind that stuff, did you?” He slid a little down the ramparts of the tower, the strength of his legs apparently fading, but my kindness was gone now and I could hardly care less. 

“As a matter of fact, I did,” he said, stunning me. I bit my lip to keep the shock from showing on my face as he went on. “I was sure it was you.”

“Why didn’t you stop me then?” I demanded.

“I tried, Draco. Professor Snape has been keeping watch over you on my orders –”

I shook my head, cutting through his words with my own, “He hasn’t been doing _your_ orders, he promised my mother –”

“Of course that is what he would tell you, Draco, but –” 

Dumbledore cut me off this time, but I refused to let him finish such a blasphemous sentence, so I cut through him shouting, “He’s a double agent, you stupid old man, he isn’t working for you, you just think he is!” I hated myself for my words. I wanted to turn the wand on myself and shout the curse I had to shout at this man. I deserved it far more than he. He had done nothing, but love and care for the people he was supposed to protect all his life and I…I had done so much wrong, hurting so many innocent people…probably her even…that I didn’t deserve life.

“We must agree to differ on that, Draco. It so happens that I trust Professor Snape –”

My next words, even though they came out in a sneer, were meant to save Dumbledore from further heartache as I practically screamed, “Well, you’re losing your grip then! He’s been offering me plenty of help – wanting all the glory for himself – wanting a bit of the action – ‘What are you doing?’ ‘Did you do the necklace, that was stupid, it could have blown everything –’ But I haven’t told him what I’ve been doing in the Room of Requirement, he’s going to wake up tomorrow and it’ll all be over and he won’t be the Dark Lord’s favorite anymore, he’ll be nothing compared to me, nothing!”

I frightened myself. How could I say such a thing?  How? 

_Why can’t we just go where he’ll never find us?_

I swallowed hard, my tears swimming in my eyes now. I knew he must see them. 

My father’s words returned to me then. _Weak. You’re so weak, Draco. How can you even dare call yourself my son?_ I had so badly wanted to tell him that I didn’t, that I wished I wasn’t his son, but that would have ended badly, that would have been a fight I couldn’t win. Even for her, I could not have won that fight without making things worse.

“Very gratifying,” Dumbledore said mildly. “We all like appreciation for our own hard work, of course. But you must have had an accomplice, all the same…someone in Hogsmeade, someone who was able to slip Katie the – the – Aaaah…” I froze with the realization that he knew I knew Unforgiveable curses. That was another thing she’d begged me not to do. Another sin I had committed without a second thought, thinking the whole time I was protecting her, when really I was just walking across a fraying rope that ended with our destruction. “…of course…Rosmerta. How long has she been under the Imperius Curse?”

I didn’t want to answer. I begged my mouth to stay shut. I prayed I wouldn’t say anything else I would regret, but my mouth didn’t listen and even as I said it, I knew that trying to keep quiet was a moot point. I might as well go with it. “Got there at last, have you?”

There was another yell from below, much louder than the last. This time I distinctly heard my name. And it was her voice. Screaming. “Draco!” I looked nervously over my shoulder again, dreading what I was going to see when the rest of the group arrived, then back at Dumbledore, who went on.

“So poor Rosmerta was forced to lurk in her own bathroom and pass that necklace to any Hogwarts student who entered the room unaccompanied? And the poisoned mead…well, naturally, Rosmerta was able to poison it for you before she sent the bottle to Slughorn, believing it was to be my Christmas present…Yes, very neat…very neat…Poor Mr. Filch would not, of course, think to check a bottle of Rosmerta’s. Tell me, how have you been communicating with Rosmerta? I thought we had all methods of communication in and out of the school monitored.”

“Enchanted coins,” I spat, compelled to keep speaking, even though my wand hand was shaking horribly. “I had one and she had the other and I could send her messages –”

“Isn’t that the secret method of communication the group that called themselves Dumbledore’s Army used last year?” asked Dumbledore. His tone was light and conversational, but I watched him slip an inch lower down the wall as he said it. I wished I were a good person. I wished, not for the first time, that I was Potter. Or even one of his friends, despite how annoying they were.

“Yeah, I got the idea from them,” I said, with a twisted smile, thinking that I might as well personify evil. “I got the idea of poisoning the mead from the Mudblood Granger as well, I heard her talking in the library about Filch not recognizing problems.” 

“Please do not use that offensive word in front of me,” Dumbledore said.

I gave a harsh laugh, but not because I was trying to be cruel. It was because _she_ was a Mudblood and I hated that word too. I had grown to hate it more than anyone I knew, probably even more than him. The only reason I said it now was to keep up the façade of being a cruel person. Though, if all truth be told, I didn’t really need a façade for that. Still I said, “You care about me saying, ‘Mudblood’ when I’m about to kill you?” Me finally saying it made my insides recoil, sort of like an inner flinch. It reminded me of her, when I’d first raised my hand and she’d thought I was going to strike her.

“Yes I do,” Dumbledore said, his feet sliding a little on the floor as he struggled to remain upright. “But as for being about to kill me, Draco, you have had several long minutes now, we are quite alone, I am more defenseless than you can have dreamed of finding me, and still you have not acted…”

She was what was keeping me from doing my job. 

_Please! You don’t have to do this!_

Her and her love.

_Why can’t we run away together?_

Her and…just…her.

My mouth contorted involuntarily, as though I had tasted something very bitter. Though it wasn’t thoughts of her. It was thoughts of what I had _done_ to her. Of what I was _doing_ to her, of what _they_  were doing to her, of what her life was going to become after tonight. The bitter taste in my mouth was the bile rising in the back of my throat.

“Now, about tonight,” Dumbledore went on. “I am a little puzzled about how it happened…You knew that I had left the school? But of course,” he answered his own question, “Rosmerta saw me leaving, she tipped you off, using your ingenious coins, I’m sure.”

I swallowed saying, “That’s right. But she said you were just going for a drink, you’d be back…”

“Well, I certainly did have a drink…I came back…after a fashion,” Dumbledore mumbled. “So you decided to spring a trap for me?” When he put it that way, it sounded just as stupid and childish as it was in all actuality. _She was right._

“We decided to put the Dark Mark over the tower to get you to hurry up here, to see who’d been killed and it worked!” I thought I was shouting, but my voice came out in more of half a whisper and half a voice.

“Well…yes and no…”he said, trying to confuse me, obviously. “But am I to take it, then, that nobody has been murdered?”

I wished, oh how I wished I could say yes, but I wasn’t going to lie to him. “Someone’s dead,” I said, my voice going up an octave as I said this. “One of your people…I don’t know who, it was dark…I stepped over the body…I was supposed to be waiting up here when you got back, only your Phoenix lot got in the way…”

“Yes, they do that,” he said.

There was a bang and shouts from down below, louder than ever; it sounded as though people were fighting on the actual spiral staircase that led to where we were. I heard _her_ screams. I heard her trying to make them stop through her tears. “Please stop! You have what you want! Please just don’t hurt anyone else!” Someone shouted at her to shut up and I heard a hand hit her face hard. It sounded like Fenrir. I vowed to find a reason to break his nose once this was all over.

“There is little time, one way or another,” Dumbledore said, breaking my ears away from the fight below us. “So let us discuss your options, Draco.”

            “ _My_ options!” I said loudly, trying, again, to convince myself more than him. “I’m standing here with a wand – I’m about to kill you –”

            “My dear boy, let us have no more pretense about that. If you were going to kill me, you would have done it when you first disarmed me, you would not have stopped for this pleasant chat about ways and means.”

            “I haven’t got any options!” I said, feeling all of the color drain from my face. “I’ve got to do it! He’ll kill me! He’ll kill my whole family! He’ll kill her!” _He’s going to kill her anyway,_ I reminded myself as the shouts below us grew in volume and proximity.

            “I appreciate the difficulty of your position,” Dumbledore told me. “Why else do you think I have not confronted you before now? Because I knew that you would have been murdered if Lord Voldemort realized that I suspected you.” I noticed how he carefully avoided mentioning her and I wondered for not the first time that evening if there was more known about our relationship than we had thought. _Well obviously there is,_ I thought. _Otherwise, they wouldn’t be holding her captive._

            I winced at the mention of the Dark Lord’s name. Because I am a coward. Because I am afraid. Afraid for her. For what they are going to do to her once we leave this place.

            “I did not dare speak to you of the mission with which I knew you had been entrusted, in case he used Legilimency against you,” he continued. “But now at last we can speak plainly to each other…No harm has been done, you have hurt nobody, though you are very lucky that your unintentional victims survived…I can help you, Draco.”

            His words were false. So many people were harmed _because_ of me. Katie Bell and Ron Weasley to start along with a list of countless anonymous muggles. And her now too. Always her. Just her knowing of my existence hurt her when she learned of everything I had done, of everything I had been doing for the past year and a half. Now she was going to be hurt worse beyond my imagination, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

            “No, you can’t,” I said to him, my words more tired and weary than angry and vicious. My wand hand was shaking very badly now as images of her being tortured, raped, and killed flashed through my mind. “Nobody can. He told me to do it or he’ll kill me.” _He’ll kill her._  “I’ve got no choice.” 

            “He cannot kill you if you are already dead,” Dumbledore’s words puzzled me, until he went on. “Come over to the right side, Draco, and we can hide you more completely than you can possibly imagine. What is more, I can send members of the Order to your mother tonight to hide her likewise.” _I don’t care about my mother. What about_ her _? Can you save her?!_   “Nobody would be surprised that you had died your attempt to kill me – forgive me, but Lord Voldemort expects it. Nor would the Death Eaters be surprised that we had captured and killed your mother – it is what they would do themselves, after all. Your father is safe at the moment in Azkaban…When the time comes, we can protect him too. Come over to the right side, Draco…you are not a killer…”

            For the longest time, I just stared at Dumbledore. And wished with everything inside me that he was right. I wished I could lower my wand as I had been wishing the entire night, and believe that he could hide me. And my family. And her. But I knew the truth. The Potter’s had died because someone betrayed them when they went into hiding. Someone they thought was their friend. Peter Pettigrew. He was never a suspected Death Eater. And all of my parents friends, anyone they could trust was a very well known Death Eater. My aunt Bellatrix, my mother’s sister, was a Death Eater. And the other Death Eaters were dragging _her_ up here to torture me with. Would he still want to help me even after I hurt her? _No, he wouldn’t._ That voice inside reminded me.

            “But I got this far, didn’t I?” I said, slowly, testing the words on my tongue as I spoke them. “They thought I’d die in the attempt, but I’m here…and you’re in my power…I’m the one with the wand…You’re at my mercy…”

            “No, Draco,” he said quietly. “It is my mercy and not yours that matters now.”

            I did not speak. My mouth was open, my wand hand still trembling as I heard her screams. I could feel my wand drop by a fraction as if in slow motion. Tears were pooling in my eyes now. And the temptation to give in to him, to let him help me, help my family, help _her_ , most importantly, was so strong that the words were about to leave my mouth, when I heard footsteps thundering up the stairs and a second later, I was pushed out of the way as four people in black robes joined me on the tower. I was paralyzed in fear now, my eyes unblinking as I took in the robed figures surrounding me and Dumbledore. I recognized all of them, but I couldn’t have cared less about their appearing. All I saw was the small figure, face hidden in the shadows that was struggling against Fenrir’s iron grip as he held one huge hand against her mouth, keeping her from screaming, and used the other to grip her arm.

            I watched a man standing next to Fenrir give an odd lopsided leer and a wheezy giggle. I wished had the courage to turn my wand to him and curse him, but then I knew Fenrir would hold her against me and I wasn’t going to risk her life anymore than I already had.

            “Dumbledore cornered!” the lopsided man, Amycus, said. He turned to the stocky woman standing next to him, Alecto, who was grinning eagerly. “Dumbledore wandless, Dumbledore alone! Well done, Draco, well done!”

            I knew that if I really were all for what I was doing, I should’ve feel proud of myself for getting as far as I had. I should feel like I had finished a job well done, but I didn’t. I didn’t even hear what Amycus was saying. All I saw was her.  Her eyes, wide with terror, her hands, so small and fragile, compared to Fenrir’s tugging at the hand clapped around her mouth to no avail.

            While I was stuck in my trance, staring at her horrified face, Dumbledore said calmly , “Good evening, Amycus. And you’ve brought Alecto too…Charming…”

            Alecto gave an angry snicker. “Think your little jokes’ll help you on your deathbed then?” she said, jeeringly. I couldn’t help, but wince, if only slightly, at her harshness towards the headmaster. The man who was supposed to have been long since dead by now. Because I killed him.

            “Joke?” Dumbledore asked, sounding amused. “No, no, these are just manners.”

            _Stop using them!_ I wanted to shout. _Stop being so polite! Make me hate you! Make me want to kill you!_ However, I knew then, that even if I had wanted to kill him, I couldn’t have. She was right there. I wasn’t going to murder anyone in cold blood with her right there.

            “Do it,” Fenrir hissed at me. I blinked, trying to clear my mind, trying to pretend she wasn’t right there.

            _Draco, please no. Don’t do this. You don’t have to._

            “Is that you, Fenrir?” Dumbledore asked, his voice only background music to the disharmonious conversation banging around in my head.

            _I have to. To save your life and mine._

            “That’s right,” Fenrir rasped. “Pleased to see me, Dumbledore?”

            _There is nothing in this world that you_ have _to do, Draco. You don’t_ have _to be a Death Eater. You don’t_ have _to kill Dumbledore. You don’t_ have _to love me._

            “No, I cannot say that I am.”

            _You’re wrong. I do have to love you. I promised you I would love you forever. I promised you I would always be there to catch you when you fall. I intend to keep that promise in any way I can._

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Fenrir grinning, showing off his yellow, pointed teeth. Blood was trickling down his chin and I watched, in horror and disgust, as he licked his lips very, very slowly, obscenely and said, “But you know how much I like kids Dumbledore.”

I glanced at _her_ still in his vise like grip, praying that he hadn’t hurt her, hadn’t cursed her. But her eyes were pleading, telling me that, even if she hadn’t been cursed she had been hurt beyond repair this night in so many ways. She looked so desperate, so hurt, so in pain in that moment that a single tear fell from my eye and landed on my hand that was halfway up to wiping my face. I dropped my hand, wishing that instead I could reach out to her to wipe the tears that were running freely and silently down her face instead.

“Am I to take it that you are attacking even without the full moon now? This is most unusual…You have developed a taste for human flesh that cannot be satisfied once a month?”

“That’s right,” Fenrir said. I watched his hold on _her_ tighten. “Shocks you that, does it, Dumbledore? Frightens you?”

_It frightens_ me _,_ I thought, more tears welling up in my eyes and threatening to fall down my cheeks. _You will hurt her._

“Well I cannot pretend it does not disgust me a little,” Dumbledore replied. “And, yes, I am a little shocked that Draco here invited you, of all people, into the school where his friends live…”

“I didn’t,” I breathed, though that was just a straight up white lie. I could tell it hurt her, since more tears fell from her eyes, wetting Fenrir’s hand. I looked everywhere, but at that man’s, no – that _monster’s_ – face. “I didn’t know he was going to come –” I began, which was half true, since I had thought it would be Bellatrix in his place, but I didn’t get a chance to tell Dumbledore this. Fenrir interrupted me.

“I wouldn’t want to miss a trip to Hogwarts, Dumbledore,” he rasped. “Not when there are throats to be ripped out…” My thoughts immediately flashed to her and I got a thousand horrible images of him hurting her in a thousand different ways. It didn’t help at all when he went on to say, “Delicious, delicious…”

He picked his front teeth with a yellowed fingernail as he added,”I could do you for afters, Dumbledore.”

“No,” said a Death Eater that I truly did not know. “We’ve got orders. Draco’s got to do it. Now, Draco, quickly.”

I knew I was showing less resolution than ever. I knew I looked as terrified as _she_ did as I turned and stared into Dumbledore’s face, which was even paler and rather lower than usual, since he had slid even farther down the rampart wall. My hand holding my wand began to tremble even harder.

“He’s not long for this world anyway, if you ask me!” Amycus shouted as Alecto gave her wheezy giggle. “Look at him – what’s happened to you, then, Dumby?”

“Oh, weaker resistance, slower reflexes, Amycus,” said Dumbledore. “Old age, in short…One day, perhaps, it will happen to you…if you are lucky…”

“What’s that mean, then, what’s that mean?” Amycus yelled, suddenly violent. I was just as perplexed by Dumbledore’s meaning as he was, but before Dumbledore could answer, he went on, “Always the same, weren’t yeh, Dumby, talking and doing nothing, nothing. I don’t even know why the Dark Lord’s bothering to kill yer! Come on, Draco, do it!”

_No! No, Draco! Please, please no!_

However, just at that moment, almost like a messenger sent from God, there were renewed sounds of scuffling from below and a voice shouted,  “They’ve blocked the stairs – Reducto! REDUCTO!” It was someone from the Order and, although, they didn’t frighten me, the Death Eater’s around me seemed quite nervous.

“Now, Draco, do it!” the Death Eater I didn’t know, hissed angrily.

But my hand was shaking so badly that I could barely aim. I was afraid if I tried now I might hit _her_. She and Fenrir were standing so close to him. Half of me couldn’t help, but wonder if that was done on purpose, while the other half wondered why, out of everyone else they could have taken hostage, they chose her, unless they knew…about us…

“I’ll do it,” Fenrir snarled, shoving her to the ground. She let out a gasping breath that sounded more like a sob and the unknown Death Eater, hurried over and grabbed her, holding her much as Fenrir had a second before as he shouted to the werewolf, “I said no!”

Then, suddenly, with no warning, there was a flash of light and Fenrir was blasted out of the way. He hit the side of a rampart and staggered, looking like anger personified. My heart was hammering so hard as my eyes tried to adjust from the shock of the bright light that it seemed impossible that no one could hear it. 

“Draco, do it or stand aside so one of us –” Alecto began, but she never finished. At precisely that moment, Severus Snape, my mentor in many ways, the potions master and, apparently, a loyal Death Eater, appeared. His wand was clutched so tightly in his hand his knuckles were white and as his dark eyes swept over the scene he’d happened upon on the tower, I noticed they seemed, more nervous than pleased.

“We’ve got a problem, Snape,” Amycus said, sounding annoyed, though his eyes and wand were fixed on Dumbledore. “The boy doesn’t seem able –”

“Severus…” 

The sound made us all freeze. Me, the Death Eaters, Snape. Even _she_ stopped her struggling. In a way, the sound frightened me. Dumbledore headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, one of the greatest and most renowned wizards in the world, was…pleading.

Snape said nothing. He only walked forward and pushed me roughly out of the way, making me lose sight of her for a moment. The Death Eaters fell back without a word. Even Fenrir cowered. For a moment, he gazed at Dumbledore. Foremost in his gaze and etched into his face was revulsion and hatred, but behind that, carved into the softer parts of his skin were nervousness, sadness and…regret.

“Snape…please…”

Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore.

_“Avada Kedavra!”_


End file.
